Brooklyn-based band Low Tide (Eli Oberman, Courtney Robbins and Fen Ikner) contemplate loss and the passage of time on the sweeping, powerful “Who fans the Flames,” the latest release from their debut album The Alchemist (out on October 25).
Songwriter Eli Oberman says “Who Fans the Flames” was inspired by a Jewish tradition.
“When thinking about how to write a fire song, I was really drawn to the idea of writing about fire not as a raging powerful force (which is how I usually tend to think of it), but instead as a single, fragile flame that needs to be sheltered and protected,” Oberman tells Wide Open Country. “Imagining that led me to connect the imagery to my Jewishness, thinking about how we light yahrzeit candles in remembrance of lost loved ones on the anniversaries of their deaths. The sense that a flame is being used to almost collapse time in the song was really resonant with me.”